Defining Leggy Beauty

For years, scientists have known that a woman's waist-to-hip ratio serves as a reliable indicator of her perceived femininity. Now researchers in England have determined an additional attractiveness formula: the legs-to-body ratio. Viren Swami, a psychologist at the University of Liverpool, and his colleagues showed 71 men and women line drawings of five men and five women in bathing suits. These sketches varied only in the proportion of the legs to the rest of the body, head included; each figure was the same height. The participants thought that the most attractive male figure was the one with legs the same length as the rest of his body. But for the female figures, the one with the longest legs relative to the rest of her was most admired. These opinions, which were shared by men and women alike, might help explain why even tall women with shorter partners often lengthen their legs' appearance with high heels—and why exposure of women's legs is seen as so "sexually appealing," the researchers say.